Posts tagged: iphone

Proclaim Church Presentation Software

October 11, 2011, by No comments yet

I came across a new piece of software this morning when checking my email. Proclaim software from Logos (Greek for The Word, aka The Bible), the same company that make Bible software. It was actually a Twitter follow notification. (Note: blind Twitter follows do work, I followed them afterward.) It sent me to their website which has a well designed video. While the description of the software was well done, there were precious few screen grabs of the software. I assume they want folks to sign up for the beta in order to try it out. Since my church does not use software like this during our services any longer, I don’t think I will sign up for the beta. However, I thought the community might want to know about it.

The main benefits of Proclaim are:

  • Software that lives in the cloud. Updates are automatically saved and offered to other users.
  • Runs on both Mac and PC.
  • Does not require seat licenses, but based upon total users/month.
  • Looks snazzy!

That’s about all I could glean from the video. Check it out for yourself and maybe even give Proclaim a whirl.

[Updated] Setting Up Google Apps Contacts in iPhone/iPad & Mac OS X

February 25, 2011, by 2 comments

As mentioned previously, you can setup Google Apps Mail to sync your Contacts as well. You can do this on your iPhone/iPad and your Mac.

iPhone/iPad

  1. Open the Settings application on your iPhone/iPad.
  2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
  3. Tap the account being synced.
  4. Make sure Contacts is ON

Your Contacts will now begin to sync with Google and will eventually show up online. Remember, they will only show up under My Contacts. If you create another group, it will not appear on your iOS device.

Mac OS X

You can also sync your Contacts with a Mac running OS X 10.6 with your Google Apps account. OSXDaily.com has a handy posting that I have recapped below.

  1. On your Mac, launch the Address Book application.
  2. Select Address Book>>Preferences.
  3. Click on the Accounts tab.
  4. From the left side listing, select On My Mac.
  5. Check the Synchronize with Google checkbox.
  6. Click the Configure… button next to it.
  7. Enter your Google Apps username/password.
  8. Click Sync Now from your menu bar. (This is very important as nothing will happen with you manually syncing.)

This is where it might get a little tricky. The process of syncing your Contacts with Google apparently requires iSync, which Apple no longer uses in favor of MobileMe syncing. However, even with MobileMe syncing turned off, you can manually run the sync process. In this case, you will sync with Google and not MobileMe. What is unclear is whether Google sync will continue automatically or require manual intervention from this point moving forward.

At least one response to the OSXDaily.com post mentions that also setting up Yahoo syncing at the same time will result in automatic syncing. According to them, the automated process requires at least two syncing events at the same time as one along (i.e., Google) will not work.

UPDATE – March 10, 2011
I came across another software tool that purports to help manage your Google Contacts better than the default Apple method described above. They mention duplicate entries as a problem with Apple’s Address Book sync and I have in fact experienced some duplicate entries. However, it is unclear since not all my entries have be duplicated. Spurious problem or not, it might be worth your time to check out Spanning Sync as mentioned on TUAW.com. It currently costs $25/year or $65/lifetime. But, you have the option of getting a free copy if you can convince enough of your friends to also purchase it.

Google Sync Services for Ministry

February 23, 2011, by No comments yet

GMailIf you read this blog, you are likely someone I know personally (and I thank you for reading it) or are interested in technology and its application to ministry. If you are like me, you have several email addresses and groups of people you interact with on a given day or week. Work, home, family, friends, church, each of those groups come with their own questions and requests for help as it relates to computers and technology. In my case, I have my wife, family, co-workers (it’s actually my job), personal clients, church and diocese to consider. It’s often hard to keep track of all the people and what they are asking you to do.

Because of this, I have found invaluable the syncing ability of MobileMe over the last few years. Keeping track of people and their contact information is one of the hardest things to do if you have a smart phone, work computer, personal laptop and an iPad. You make a change on one device and then you have to keep all the others updated. Enter MobileMe. I have been a subscriber to this service since it was called iTools (technically, they are not the same, but it is the predecessor).

The best thing about MobileMe, in my estimation, is its ability to keep all your contact information synced across a myriad of devices. It works best on OS X and iOS devices, but you can use it on a PC as well. I have two computers at work (Mac and PC) and have used MobileMe on both. With few problems, it just works. I make a change on my iPhone and it propagates to my MacBook Pro, iMac, and iPad with no problem. If I login and make a change via the MobileMe website, it will filter down to all my devices as well. While MobileMe did have some rather large hiccups when Apple first rolled it out, I have found it to be a stable offering since.

So, it’s a big thing that I have decided to move away from MobileMe to Google’s Sync Services. Now, I have thought about this for quite a while. MobileMe is largely built around this particular feature while Google offers it only as an add-on to their myriad services. I am also well aware that Google will not entirely replace MobileMe’s offering or linked resources. For example, MobileMe will also sync your email accounts and rules. This is helpful when setting up a new computer and keeping your rules copied from one machine to another. Third party vendors also use MobileMe to sync their product across machines, for example Transmit and iBank. As I mentioned, I have not made this decision without considering what I am losing. But, the cost of MobileMe, $99/year, is untenable when you consider it really only does one thing well that you can get somewhere else for free. Sure, MobileMe also offers email, calendaring, back to your Mac, find my iPhone/iPad and free disk space as part of the package. But, I can use GMail, Google Calendaring, LogMeIn, find my iPhone/iPad and Dropbox for free. Why pay $99 when all I really gain is syncing capabilities?

My next few posts will explain how I have gone from MobileMe to Google Sync Services and what experience it offers.

Google Apps for Personal Email

December 29, 2010, by No comments yet

I registered a domain for my family’s email some years ago and it has been hosted by a traditional method. I use a company (Dreamhost) that provides web and email hosting. So far, this has been a great option to the various free email services that are popular for a day and then get replaced. I wanted something that would last years and always allow me to connect with people over that time. This hosted solution has other advantages, most notably, the ability to save all my email and access it via IMAP. Those two can not be over exaggerated when your wife wants an email you sent last month and you only have your iPhone. Traditional email uses POP, which anyone who uses a desktop will tell you, once you download it, you can’t get it back on webmail. Hence the mail hosting. Over the years, free webmail has grown to encompass these two advantages of the traditional hosting model, but still require you to use their domain, i.e. me@fremail.com. Not bad, but not terribly portable. If they go out of business/get bought out/change service, you’re out of luck. So, I had not real reason to move from Dreamhost to another hosting solution for my email.

Until recently.

I noticed Dreamhost tried hard to advertise the ability to host your email on Gmail for several months before I actually even looked at what it meant.  Essentially, they are referencing Google’s App service. For just about any organization, you can get fifty (50) free accounts that come with Gmail, Docs and Calendaring. Not bad. Everyone needs email these days. Throw in calendaring and document creation and you have me interested. The real trick would be how this all worked.

It was easy.

Dreamhost has a link on the panel under mail management to get you started.  Essentially, you sign-up with Google Apps for your domain and then have the option to setup what apps are available and for whom. After that, you can access email, calendar and docs with ease. The pieces that intrigue me the most are calendar sharing and storage capacity. I uploaded my entire email archive and it came in at almost 7600 messages and several hundred megabytes. That’s pretty large for some and not so much for others. To get it up there, Google also has a handy little tool aptly named the Google Email Uploader. I used it on my Mac with Mail and had no problems uploading both my and my wife’s email. The only email that was skipped were duplicates. It all ended up under a label (Google eschews the traditional folder paradigm for IMAP accounts) with today’s date.

So far, no problems.

Technology’s Pitfalls

September 8, 2010, by No comments yet

While I make a living by writing Internet applications, I also use it liberally as a youth minister. However, there are inevitable problems with any computer or software package that will need to be addressed. No matter what operating system, vendor or hardware upgrade, you will inevitably deal with customer support or troll the Internet for someone else to solve the problem. That is where I am today. I have both somewhat of a triumph and ongoing problem.

My iPhone
Problem: The iOS 4.0 upgrade made it really slow. Painfully slow. My wife, who also sports a 3G iPhone, is running iOS 3.x and does not have a slowdown. Since I like the latest and greatest, I installed iOS 4.0 as soon as it hit the Internet. Great for organizing my apps. Very bad for productivity. It essentially made my iPhone too slow to use for anything other than phone calls and the occasional email check.

Solution: Thankfully, today, Apple released iOS 4.1. So far, it has solved much of my frustration. The phone seems much quicker and responsive to taps. While it pales in comparison to the current iPhone 4, it should last a little longer. That’s especially nice for a phone that under two (2) years old.

My iPad
Problem: No matter what I try, I can’t get my MobileMe calendar account to sync on my iPad. Any changes I make on it are not reflected on my other iOS devices and vice versa. Given that it is sold as a quick means to access and interact with information, this is a particularly unexpected development.

Solution: I’m still looking for one.

There is no moral to this story, just reaffirmation that technology is a useful tool and not a panacea to solve life’s myriad problems.